Monday, March 31, 2014

Daily Beast Takes Down Mitch McConnell and Jesse Benton

Mitch McConnell has thereby found himself in an unprecedented situation — the master politician is running an embarrassment of a campaign. And there is little that is tougher to survive politically than becoming a laughingstock, particularly with 24/7 cable news and social media replaying your humiliations on a virtual endless loop.

Veteran Kentucky political observers are shaking their heads at McConnell's sudden loss of political mastery. Some blame his lack of traction on the high level of difficulty of running his traditional scorched-earth strategy against a young female opponent — early sexualized GOP attacks on Grimes as an "empty dress" and an "Obama girl" backfired and perhaps have led to a heightened defensiveness from the McConnell camp and a more desperate effort to reach outside of their comfort zone into, yikes, positive advocacy."

He then goes on to point out that many believe Jesse Benton is the problem:

Others blame the campaign leadership, specifically campaign manager Jesse Benton, a Ron and Rand Paul confidant and family member. The manager's hiring was seen as a bold strategic move by McConnell to blunt tea party primary opposition; but after a recording emerged of Benton claiming that he was "holding my nose" while he worked for the establishment icon — and then after McConnell's refusal to fire or even discipline Benton for his insubordination — it appeared that the powerful Senate leader was being held captive by insurgent forces that lack the professionalism and experience to run a top-tier Senate campaign. And perhaps some of the campaign's mistakes over the past month might be attributed to a manager whose head and heart aren't really in the race.

Jesse Benton, McConnell's campaign manager, who is married to Ron Paul's granddaughter.

His 'in' to politics, sadly, was basically Ron Paul thinking he could trust his own grandson in law in helping to run his campaign.

It's a mistake any of us could have made. That being said, if Benton had to land a job running campaigns before that happened, he probably wouldn't have been hired to fetch coffee for campaign offices.

Now that everyone gets to see his "talent" on display via McConnells campaign, something tells me this will be his first & last time as a campaign manager on a national basis, unless of course sellout Rand hires him...which is obviously a distinct possibility.

Outside of the whole Ron Paul derived political machine(now not including Ron Paul), he'd be a nobody.